Seasons in Basilicata (41 page)

I peered again down into the darkness. The moonlight didn't penetrate that far. It seemed content to sheen the olive and fruit orchards and look benignly romantic. Only it didn't feel at all romantic now.

Something was moving down there. I could hear rocks being disturbed. And wasn't that a shadow? Something very quick, moving in and out of patches of moon glow. Something coming up the cliff track….

 

I
WAS BACK
so fast to our apartment that I didn't even have time to start puffing. When I did it was in great gulpy gasps that came only after I'd locked the door behind me and flung myself down in the chair by the window. Vittoria's silly little remarks had obviously mesmerized me into a half-manic state of childhood terror, taking me back to my monsters-under-the-bed years. This is ridiculous, I told myself. You're a grown man—a little too grown at times for your liking—and should not be vulnerable to such utter nonsense. So go outside onto the terrace and take a look. There's nothing there. Nothing at all. Come on. Open the door and confirm the fact that the moon is shining benevolently, the church clock is ticking away as usual, and all this werewolf stuff is a load of old codswallop, to use an old Yorkshire phrase I never fully understood.

No. I think I'd had enough for one night, thanks all the same. A wee whack of grappa and it was off to bed, boy-o, to cuddle up to my lady, who'd retired early, oblivious to the evening's trauma, and we'd both have a good laugh together about all this nonsense in the morning.

 

A
ND WE DID
. Very hearty giggles and chuckles over a large breakfast of
pancetta
and poached eggs with fresh-baked bread from our bakery across the piazza. The bakery had smelled so warm and welcoming and cozy that I was tempted to share my previous night's experiences with the two ever-smiling, gnomelike, husband-and-wife bakers.

I got as far as: “Did you hear any strange noises last night?” but before I'd finished the laborious patching-together of the question in Italian, they exchanged furtive glances, gave a brief nod of affirmation, and busied themselves around the dough-mixing machine, obviously not anxious to continue the conversation any further. Hmm, I thought, this is all most peculiar. After returning home with a mammoth loaf, I pulled out a few books from our small library over the living room fireplace and began hunting for any references to full moons and werewolves and the like.

Good old Norman Douglas pretty much dismissed the whole thing in his book
Old Calabria,
although admitting a fascination with “the tigerish flavour” and pagan myths of the wilder parts of the Mezzogiorno, its “cauldron of demonology” and a “classic home of witchcraft” full of “ghostly phantoms of the past” where “wise women and wizards abound.” In his one reference to the werewolf myths he explains that “it is not popular as a subject of conversation” although he had been told that “the more old-fashioned werewolves cling to the true
versipellis
habits, and in that case only the pigs, the inane Calabrian pigs, are dowered with the faculty of distinguishing them in daytime, when they look like any other ‘Christian.'” But Douglas's research got him nowhere. “A foreigner,” he writes, “is at an unfortunate disadvantage; if he asks questions, he will only get answers dictated by…a deliberate desire to mislead.” So he ended up agreeing with the local mayor, who stated emphatically, “‘Believe me, dear sir, the days of such fabulous monsters are over,'” and promptly dismissed the whole matter.

However, the ever-tenacious Carlo Levi did not. He even described in lurid detail precisely how such creatures with dual natures “both horrible and terrifying” should be greeted when they returned home from their nocturnal adventures:

Well that's fine for them, I thought. But what about me, us, the non–“dual-natured” of the species? I mean, as much as I agreed with the actor Peter O'Toole's little maxim, “We are all protean,” I didn't think he was including a capacity for werewolf shape-shifting. And how could anyone in the village know who their wolfish companions were? They obviously couldn't keep lugging around “inane Calabrian pigs” all the time to sniff them out. And they certainly couldn't discuss the matter sensibly with a giggly female
barista
like Vittoria and her monster mimicry and
Jaws-
theme renditions. And Don Pierino, our dear priest friend here, who had nurtured countless souls in the village for more than three decades and who thought he had lured them out of all that local superstition lore, how could he possibly clarify the matter?

I asked him a couple of days later, obliquely of course, so as not to offend his priestly nature. But, as Douglas writes, “It was not popular as a subject for conversation,” so he politely evaded my question and we discussed the niceties of his upcoming Madonna of the Rosary festivities and other papally approved local rituals instead.

So, I guess I'll never know. But from then on I decided I'd watch the beauty of the full moon nights from our terrace and then, like the other villagers, shut the shutters tight and, following Anne's sensible example, go to bed early.

Aliano's New Olive Mill

While the
vendemmia
is the high point of fall, the olive harvest is the lynchpin event of the winter season. Depending on the climate, it can take place any time between November and February. And, of course, just as important as the olives themselves is the quality of the milling process that converts these acrid, hard little fruits into silky sheens of extra-virgin oil. And this year was supposed to be a special year: the year of Aliano's brand-spankingnew, gleaming, stainless-steel, bells-and-whistles galore olive mill.

 

D
ON
P
IERINO WAS
definitely excited. You could tell that by the extent to which his usual leprechaun grin was now expanding into one of those full-blown Italian smiles: bright, white teeth fully exposed, sparkling eyes, distinctly rosy cheeks and nose, and an unusual restlessness in his normally placid, priestly manner.

“In a few weeks we will have our first pressings in the new mill, our own
frantoio
!” he told us with unsuppressed glee as Anne and I sat together with him in his study. We'd been given a brief tour of the pink stucco–walled plant, just down the road toward Alianello, financed in large part by a grant from the European Union, and had been impressed by the amazing amount of complex, shining equipment, from the conveyor belts to the enormous vats in the storage and bottling room—all laid out in full accordance with those voluminous European Union homogenizing regulations. “Over four hundred pages!” the site foreman had proudly told us, as final sprucing-up of the plant was under way in October. Around the same time, the BBC World Service was remarking on our little shortwave radio about the horrendous scope of those EU requirements—over eighty thousand pages of them in small type—which the ten recently admitted new member countries had to absorb and follow to the last sub-sub-paragraph of gobbledegook. Not to mention the equally voluminous pages of appendixes.

But somehow it had all been done here, and whatever stamps
and seals and bureaucratic rites of approval were necessary for the new mill had indeed been achieved.

“It was not always so very easy. The government can be…difficult, and our local people are often suspicious of new ideas, new initiatives. Change of any kind,” Don Pierino said as he handed me the colorful new brochure proclaiming the creation of the “
Olio dei Calanchi Maiatica
of the So. Coop. CO.ZO.A.” A sprightly logo showed five black olives growing on an olive sapling with separate roots rising from the summit of one of Aliano's unique clay-soil
calanchi
buttes, all against a perfect blue sky. Then came the reminder of the benefits of olive oil in general: “The salutary effect of Olio Oil is undoubted: it is very good for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, regulates digestive processes, limits the tissue degeneration and reduces the risk of biliry calculous.”

Other than the last phrase, which left us a little confused, the rest of it seemed quite modest compared to some of the promotional hype that appears in American and European magazines claiming just about every imaginable benefit of olive oil, from complexion and skin tone enhancement, to virility stimuli, to promises of excessive longevity and enduring well-being. Recently though there had been a few doomsayers who, reflecting that peculiar American delight in product-puffing and then product-busting (remember the oat bran, grapefruit, and pineapple diets?), had questioned some of these more outrageous claims. But I guess the olive oil–industry publicists knew all about America's yo-yo publicity antics and had managed to keep the image of “virgin” and “extra-virgin” labelings as pristine as the Madonna herself.

I read on, bemused by the brochure's Italianish promotional phraseology:

Above the text was a sumptuous color photograph of the cooperative's new bottles and five-liter-can packagings set among a cornucopia of sunflowers, stone jars brimming with green and black olives, gorgeous spring-green salads, garlic, peppers, and ancient and very battered cooking pans.

On the reverse side a photograph of the dramatic buttes and crags of Aliano's
calanchi
country was reinforced by more delightful pidgin English text:

O
LIVE TREE

Don Pierino watched us closely as we folded the brochure. “So,” he asked. “You like?”

“Very impressive,” I said truthfully. The fact that the So. Coop. CO.ZO.A. had managed to put together a convincing presentation of the quality and uniqueness of Aliano's one remaining staple crop (admittedly in rather bizarre English)—and in doing so had possibly saved the local farming traditions from fading into the mists of economic obscurity—was indeed admirable.

“I hope the oil is as good as this leaflet says it is,” I said. “As good as that famous Florentine Conca d'oro [“Golden Basin”] oil!”

The good don gave an eloquently expressive gesture that suggested the undoubtedly supreme excellence of our village product, expanded enthusiastically upon the brochure's claims, and expounded at great length on the very special characteristics of the Maiatica olive.

We nodded enthusiastically too, thinking our friend was a natural publicist. Put him on some TV program about the unique bounties of Italian home-produced gastronomic delights, and Aliano might well find its young men scurrying back from the urban fleshpots of Bologna and Milan to capitalize on the small family farms they'd so long regarded as old-fashioned, archaic, generational culs-du-sac of nonambition.

“Congratulations,” I said. “You may have given little Aliano a whole new future.”

“Yes, once again!” Anne added. She was always impressed by the priest's get-things-done abilities, which to date had included the
creation of the local Levi museum, involvement in all restoration activities and in the
Parco Letterario Carlo Levi Viaggi Sentimentali
outdoor theater and cultural events, and publication of the town's spritely little magazine
La Voce dei Calanchi.

“Oh, I hope, I hope,” Don Pierino said, clapping his hands delightedly in a “from your mouth to God's ear” spirit, although I was sure he was far too respectful of the higher powers ever to use such prosaic phraseology.

“So, when does the pressing begin?” I asked.

“When the harvest starts. Maybe in two or three months. And then we should have our first new products for distribution. Everything should be
benessere
(comfortable).” He was so excited I could have hugged him. (Certainly I had no problem hugging other people, but, I thought, maybe priests don't go in for that kind of thing.) However, as we prepared to leave, telling him that we'd be there to celebrate the first extra-virgin cold pressings, he came around from behind his desk with his arm outstretched for a normal handshake. And I thought, what the heck, this man has given more than thirty years of his life to salvaging and nurturing not only souls, but the economic well-being of this little village in the middle of this wilderness. So I hugged him. And, after a moment's surprise, during which I could feel his hands sort of flustering about, he returned the hug. A good one, too. Not quite bearish but certainly—what's the word they used in church?—very beneficient. And he gave me a blessing, too. I got a personal blessing, which is a very rare occurrence for me. Come to think of it, maybe a first. His blessing of Anne was even more florid, although I noticed that, with her, he stuck to a demure handshake of farewell. Very correct local behavior apparently, especially in the presence of husbands.